yabridge VS awesome-linuxaudio

> To my knowledge all VST plugins can be used on Linux (via Wine). Is that not the case?

Yes, although I would recommend Yabridge rather than linvst.

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

It should be already packaged in some Linux distros, but building and installation are straightforward. Basically it installs some libraries and an executable which once called will convert a Windows plugin in .dll form in a Linux+WINE loadable .so library.

If you use the Linux port, you may want to use Yabridge to load Windows VSTs in a transparent way.

http://reaper.fm/

https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

Look into yabridge. You can test it with your plugins to confirm it'll work. Won't cost you anything.

But yeah Yabridge for me worked the best way. https://github.com/robbert-vdh/yabridge

NAM vst works with Yabridge. You will get native GUI that way. Protesus is a good alternative with native Linux version and it is integrated into BYOD through GuitarML processor. BYOD is the best sounding guitar software (IMHO), Linux or not.

> Is there a highly-regarded software (or hardware + software) emulator for the DX7?

Dexed is probably what you're looking for, although there are others here: https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio#synthesizers--...

These are not all free, but it's worth checking out. https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio

regarding Ableton, I know some people are doing it but my advice is don't go for proton/wine if you can go native. there's tons of pro soft for linux: https://github.com/nodiscc/awesome-linuxaudio

This awesome-linuxaudio page has a number of quality programs that you can try.

I think the landscape is fairly good now actually. There's tons of good FOSS audio software, and for commercial DAWs we have Bitwig, REAPER, Renoise and Tracktion Waveform. And while there stil aren't that many commercial plugin developers out there that natively support Linux, you can get really far nowadays with the offerings from Bitwig, U-He, TAL, AudioDamage, Loomer, Pianoteq, Audio Assault and many more vendors. You can find are some non-exhaustive lists of vendors supporting Linux here, here and here. Since I too don't want to make compromises if I don't have to, I made yabridge last year which lets you use 32-bit and 64-bit Windows VST2 and VST3 as if they were native 64-bit Linux VST2 and VST3 plugins. I'm really happy with how that turned out, and the reception has been nothing but positive. Wine's getting really good, and the only things that can consistently make things difficult are invasive DRM schemes like iLoK and Waves' DRM. But yeah, even without yabridge there are plenty of good native DAWs and plugins for Linux right now.